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In discussing the "higher phase of communist society," for example, Marx sets the "to each according to his needs" criterion in a broad human-developmental context, referring to a situation

after the enslaving sub-ordination of individuals under division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour, from a mere means of life, has itself become the prime necessity of life; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly. (1966, p. 10; emphases added)

Whether the above projection is anti-ecological depends on the nature of co-operative wealth-especially the amount of material and energy throughput and the disruption of ecological interconnections that it entails. Communism's abundance of wealth and its all-round human development are ecologically sound insofar as they encompass nature's aesthetic and material use values in the context of a shared social responsibility to maintain and improve the quality of land and other natural conditions. The same goes for Engels' projection, in Anti-Dühring, of a "more rapidly progressing develop- ment of the productive forces, and therewith of a practically limitless growth of production itself" (1939, p. 308). The ecological conno- tations of this development and growth clearly hinge on the meaning of "practical" in this context-one closely connected, in Engels' view, with the communist priority "of securing for every member of society, through social production, an existence which is not only fully sufficient from a material standpoint... but also guarantees to them the completely unrestricted development and exercise of their physical and mental faculties" (p. 309). Engels' projection is thus ecologically sound insofar as his conception of "unrestricted" individual develop- ment itself involves a healthy and sustainable interaction with the natural and social environment.

Similar considerations apply to Marx's projections of growth in communist wealth as formulated in Volume III of Capital. Hence, when Marx indicates that the associated producers will "constantly expand reproduction to the extent dictated by social needs," the ecological connotations of such expanded reproduction clearly hinge on the nature of the needs to be satisfied (1967, III, p. 876). For Marx, communism's "progressive expansion of the process of reproduction" encompasses the entire "living process of the society of producers" (pp. 819, 250; emphasis in original). And as discussed earlier, Marx specifies the "material and intellectual advantages" of this "social development" in terms of the less restricted development of people as natural and social beings, both at work and in free time (p. 819). Hence, when Marx and Engels envision communism as "an organisation of production and intercourse which will make possible the normal satisfaction of needs, i.e., a satisfaction which is limited only by the needs themselves," they do not mean a complete satiation of limitlessly expanding needs of all kinds, including the type of anti-ecological mass consumption characteristic of capitalism (1976, p. 273). They mean a satisfaction of the needs associated with a less restricted, all-round development of producers and communities. Although communism entails a freer development and satisfaction of some needs, it also involves important changes in the way needs are satisfied and even outright reductions in certain needs generated by capitalism's class-exploitative relations:

Communist organisation has a twofold effect on the desires produced in the individual by present-day relations; some of these desires-namely desires which exist under all relations, and only change their form and direction under different social relations- are merely altered by the communist social system, for they are given the opportunity to develop normally; but others-namely those originating solely in a particular society, under particular conditions of production and intercourse-are totally deprived of their conditions of existence. Which will be merely changed and which eliminated in a communist society can only be determined in a practical way. (Marx & Engels, 1976, p. 273)

As Ernest Mandel points out, this social-relational and human- developmental approach to need satisfaction is quite different from the "absurd notion" of unqualified "abundance" often ascribed to Marx, that is, "a regime of unlimited access to a boundless supply of all goods and services" (1992, p. 205). In addition to being "a nightmare" both ecologically and socially, the latter notion directly contradicts Marx's historical projection of communist abundance:

A moment of reflection will lead one to realize that to assume the "limitless" expansion of "needs" and individual consumption is actually to deny the feasibility of communism. Material abundance would be impossible, and the mercantile categories, which in fact correspond to a state of semi-scarcity of goods and economic resources, would survive. (Mandel, 1973, p. 71)

Although Marx's vision of communist need satisfaction is consistent with a "definition of abundance [as] saturation of demand," this has to be set in the context of a division of needs into a "hierarchy" of "basic needs, secondary needs that become indispensable with the growth of civilization, and luxury, inessential or even harmful needs" (Mandel, 1992, pp. 206-7, emphasis in original; see also Mandel, 1986, pp. 14-8). Marx's conception of communist abundance foresees a satiation of basic needs and a gradual extension of this satiation to secondary needs as they develop socially in the context of expanded free time and cooper- ative worker-community control over social production-not a full satiation of all conceivable needs (cf. Sherman, 1970). In Marx's projection, the producers will tend to use their newfound material security and increased free time to engage in a variety of intellectual and aesthetic forms of self-realization and self-development. This development of secondary needs is to be enhanced by the greater opportunities that real worker-community control provides for people to become informed participants in economic, political, and cultural life (as opposed to their current status mainly as hierarchically directed laborers and passive consumers).

It is in this last context that the full ecological significance of free time as a measure of communist wealth becomes clear. For insofar as the secondary needs developed and satisfied during free time are less material and energy intensive, their increasing weight in total needs reduces the pressure of communist reproduction on natural conditions, ceteris  paribus. Besides, reductions in work-time directly lessen productive material and energy throughput, ceteris paribus. In particular, increases in the productivity of social labor do not entail rising material and energy throughput insofar as they are compensated by reductions in work-time (Gorz, 1994; pp. 27-37).

Of course, since labor (like nature) is still a fundamental "substance of wealth," labor time is an important "measure of the cost of production...even if exchange-value is eliminated" (Marx, 1971, p. 257; emphasis in original). As Marx puts it in Capital: "In all states of society, the labour-time that it costs to produce the means of subsistence, must necessarily be an object of interest to mankind" (1967, I, p. 71). Social reproduction requires an allocation of labor among need-satisfying activities; hence "no form of society can prevent the working time at the disposal of society from regulating production one way or another" (Marx to Engels, January 8, 1868, in Marx & Engels, 1975, p. 187; emphasis in original). As a result:

On the basis of communal production, the determination of time remains, of course, essential. The less time the society requires to produce wheat, cattle etc., the more time it wins for other production, material or mental. Just as in the case of an individual, the multiplicity of its development, its enjoyment and its activity depends on economization of time. Economy of time, to this all economy ultimately reduces itself. Society likewise has to distribute its time in a purposeful way, in order to achieve a production adequate to its overall needs; just as the individual has to distribute his time correctly in order to achieve knowledge in proper proportions or in order to satisfy the various demands on his activity. Thus, economy of time, along with the planned distribution of labour time among the various branches of production, remains the first economic law on the basis of communal production. It becomes law, there, to an even higher degree. (Marx, 1973, pp. 172-3)

Marx immediately adds, however, that communism's economy of time "is essentially different from a measurement of exchange values (labour or products) by labour time" (1973, p. 173). His reasoning here is straightforward: communism's economy of time serves use value (human development), whereas capitalism's economy of time reduces use values (including useful labor and natural conditions) to vehicles of value and capital accumulation. Specifically, the communist economy of labor time supports reductions of work-time (increases in human wealth as measured by free time), but capital's economy of time is oriented toward increasing the surplus labor time expended by the producers (increases in capitalist wealth as measured by surplus value).¹⁹ This divergence between the two economies of time is ecologically significant, given the positive ecological potential of increased free time and the anti-ecological character of surplus-value accumulation (Burkett, 1999b, Chapter 7).

In any case, Marx and Engels never project labor cost as the sole guide for resource-allocation decisions under communism: they only indicate that it is to be one important measure of the social cost associated with different use values. This use of labor time as a measure of cost "is accomplished... by the direct and conscious control of society over its working time-which is possible only with common ownership," unlike the situation under capitalism, where the "regulation" of social labor time is only accomplished indirectly, "by the movement of commodity prices" (Marx to Engels, January 8, 1868, in Marx & Engels, 1975, p. 187). According to Marx: "It is only where production is under the actual, predetermining control of society that the latter establishes a relation between the volume of social labour-time applied in producing definite articles, and the volume of the social want to be satisfied by these articles" (1967, III, p. 187). Obviously, the establishment of a relation between labor cost and social want need not imply that labor time is the sole cost taken into account. Alternatively, communist planning could include the maintenance and improvement of natural conditions (along with increases in free time) under the category of "the social wants to be satisfied" by the system of production and consumption.

Whether environmental goals are included under social costs or social benefits is less important than the overriding priority of use value in Marx's projection. Given Marx's insistence on nature's contribution to use value (Burkett, 1999b, p. 26), there is nothing inherently anti-ecological about the continued use of labor time as an important measure of cost in the future association. Marx's communism would, for one thing, dispense with the waste of nature and labor associated with capitalism's "anarchical system of competition" and "vast number of employments... in themselves superfluous" (1967, I, p. 530). Many anti-ecological use values could be eliminated or greatly reduced under a planned system of labor allocation and land-use, among them the excessive processing and packaging of food and other goods, advertising, the automobile/real estate/petroleum complex, and the planned obsolescence of products. All these destructive use values are "indispensable" for capitalism; from the standpoint of an ecologically sound system, however, they represent "the most outrageous squandering of labour-power and of the social means of production" (Marx, 1967, I, p. 530; cf. Bahro, 1978, pp. 428-30; Gorz, 1994, pp. 31-4).

To repeat: Marx and Engels do not envision communism as prioritizing minimum labor cost over all ecological and other social goals. Not only is economy of labor time treated as a means to the higher end of use value, including expanded free time, but there is also strong evidence that the founders of Marxism would gladly accept increases in necessary labor time in return for a more ecologically sound production. Hence Engels, after describing the "abolition of the antithesis between town and country" as "a direct necessity of...production and, moreover, of public health," goes on to ridicule Dühring's projection "that the union between agriculture and industry will nevertheless be carried through even against economic considerations, as if this would be some economic sacrifice!" (1939, pp. 323-4; emphasis in original). Clearly, what bothers Engels is not just Dühring's inadequate appreciation of nature as a necessary condition of production, but also Dühring's failure to see that if communism is at all distinct from capitalism it is because the former's production is dictated by use value, and that this involves a more human, social, and ecological definition of economic necessity. This is precisely how the ecological wealth criterion is fulfilled by Marx's vision of communism.

The foregoing analysis supports the consistency of Marx's vision of communism with an ecologically sound human production. Asso- ciated production, with increases in free time and material security for the producers, represents a potentially congenial human and social context for healthy and sustainable people-nature relations. The realization of this potential hinges on a new social union of producers and communities with the conditions of production, that is, a collective appropriation, utilization, and development of these con- ditions that replaces exchange value with use value as the overriding mode of economic regulation. Marx envisions this union taking the form of communal property in the conditions of production, where "property" connotes user rights and responsibilities rather than the rights of "owners" (either individuals or society as a whole) to un- restricted use based on "possession." This communal property is designed to promote the free development of human beings (compared to class societies) while protecting the interests of future generations in a sustainable appropriation from nature-one that maintains and even improves the quality of natural wealth. In Marx's vision, the de- alienation of the conditions of production includes a broad diffusion of the scientific knowledge required for effective communal management of natural conditions and their appropriation in the social labor process.

The present study must, however, be qualified in three ways. First, Marx's vision of communism remains on the level of basic organizing principles; it does not provide a blueprint or detailed model demonstrating socially and technologically advanced production without market or authoritarian state forms of economic regulation. The feasibility of the kind of communally regulated production foreseen by Marx can only be established historically, as an outgrowth of worker- community struggles to reunite with and gain control over their conditions of production. Second, there is much room for disagreement over the specific criteria that should be used to ecologically evaluate socio-economic systems. It is conceivable that alternative criteria could yield different results from those obtained here. Third, the present article does not address the yawning gap between the pro-ecological content of Marx's communism and the largely anti-ecological history of the U.S.S.R. and other nations professing allegiance to Marxism.²⁰ This disjuncture is an important research project in its own right, even though a necessary ingredient in its fruition is an adequate ecological assessment of Marx's own vision.

Notes

1. See Burkett (1999a, pp. 7-9; 1999b, pp. 147-8) and Foster (1995, pp. 108-9) for additional references to such ecological criticisms of Marx's communism.

2. For broader discussions of the basic organizing principles of Marx's communism, see Ollman (1979), Chattopadhyay (1992), and Burkett (1999b, pp. 230-9).

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